We use 2checkout for billing, and you can't set up trial periods with it. So to offer a trial period you'd have to sign up without giving your credit card info. I'd like to be able to make sure someone doesn't sign up for a free trial without any intention of ever staying with us (like someone who doesn't even have a method of payment). Anyone know of any ways around this? Or another good 3rd party biller who does offer the set up of trial periods?

if you have trial periods for users:
< user signs up for trial>
< users account is activated >
< user spams >

you better get the credit card and make sure it works (!). All trial period users usually spam or hack.. so beware!

Yeah, that idea is scrapped, too big of a chance to take I'd say.

Yep. Starting Tuesday I'm removing the trial period from my site.

Or:

Collect their CC details, don't process them and get the user to fax a photocopy of thier CC for proof.

Or:

Charge them $1, if they don't like it then what have they really lost? If they sign up then just knock $1 off their first month.

Or:

Scrap free trial, offer rock solid money back guarantee.

Originally posted by APEXware
We use 2checkout for billing, and you can't set up trial periods with it. So to offer a trial period you'd have to sign up without giving your credit card info. I'd like to be able to make sure someone doesn't sign up for a free trial without any intention of ever staying with us (like someone who doesn't even have a method of payment). Anyone know of any ways around this? Or another good 3rd party biller who does offer the set up of trial periods?

Sign your client up.
Click on the transaction & credit back the 1st installment of the recurring bill.

We offer a free trial on our site and it has worked out pretty well. Customers can either choose to provide us with a cc number or they can choose to pay by check in which case we don't bill them until the trial period is over. The risks for doing this have already been mentioned, to prevent those problems we simply disable all email and ssh features for the account. If they want them turned on they have to open a real account.

Usually only few of them are converted into paying customers - that's my experience :)

John

For us, we convert about half of the trial users into paying customers, it works out well.

For us, we convert about half of the trial users into paying customers, it works out well.

Yes, but as mentioned by others, the real problem is that it attracts all kinds of spammers from all over the world - I've lost customers because of that. We will never offer free trials again but stick with the money back guarantee.

Thanks
John

Yes, and as I already mentioned in a post a little further up, we disable email and ssh access for all trial accounts. If they want it enabled they have to pay. I am not trying to convince you to try it, doesn't matter to me, just telling you it works very well for us.

Tom writes:
>>>
Sign your client up.
Click on the transaction & credit back the 1st installment of the recurring bill.
__________________
TomD
tom@2checkout.com
>>>>

Is there any charge/cost/fee to do that?

Originally posted by Jim777
Tom writes:
>>>
Sign your client up.
Click on the transaction & credit back the 1st installment of the recurring bill.
__________________
TomD
tom@2checkout.com
>>>>

Is there any charge/cost/fee to do that?

If you credit back the installment within a day of signing up there is no fee incurred.
If you wait longer than a day, the 5.5% & $0.45 would still be paid by you. (it may be 2 days, but I'll say 1 day to be safe)

Hey! I think I am going to have to agree with everyone when it comes to this subject. As we temporarly offered trial accounts on our server and out of 7 signups, only 23 were legitmate. About 4 of them were bombing our servers with that nasty little thing called spam. So we monitored them and just cut them off. But, We did receive some legitmate signups which are still going today (Spam-free).

Thanks,
BMedia

We offered trials for about a week, and only one of the trial accounts was legit, so I figure out 30 day money back guarantee is plenty good enough. ;)

Originally posted by bmedia
Hey! I think I am going to have to agree with everyone when it comes to this subject. As we temporarly offered trial accounts on our server and out of 7 signups, only 23 were legitmate. About 4 of them were bombing our servers with that nasty little thing called spam. So we monitored them and just cut them off. But, We did receive some legitmate signups which are still going today (Spam-free).

Thanks,
BMedia

Thats fantastic! You got 23 legitimate signups out of 7? You'll have to teach me how to do that! hehe

Only messing around.

Funny..but hey it's possible! Sometimes one person will sign up with more than one account. :D